


Leave It Locked

by Seraphym



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fallow Mire, Silvhen Lavellan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 14:07:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraphym/pseuds/Seraphym
Summary: Solas is finding his deepening feelings for Silvhen harder and harder to ignore. During the search for a key in the Fallow Mire with her, he is forced to face the fact that she has become as important to him as his driving need to restore the world he once knew. Shaken to his core, he makes a dangerous mistake.





	Leave It Locked

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second of three out-of-order chapters of my long fic that I’m trying to muster the courage to post! I’m always looking to improve, so I’m hoping for some honest feedback. And a few atta girls definitely wouldn’t go amiss. ;)

Silvhen found the Fallow Mire strangely appealing. Hordes of undead, random blasts, and endless wet notwithstanding, it was actually kind of peaceful. There was an unexpected softness in the air. It seemed like it should be cold, but it wasn’t; the whole mire was enveloped in a gentle mugginess not unlike the midsummer nights she’d spent making up stories about the stars as a lonely child.

Despite her companions’ grumbling, Silvhen couldn’t resist picking her way along the saturated banks of the endless marshy ponds to deftly snip Blood Lotus and Dawn Lotus plants to replenish her stores at Skyhold. She knew the complaining didn’t stem from any true resentment. If anything, she suspected that part of the grudging respect she’d earned from Cassandra was due to her obvious commitment to the Inquisition’s growth and success.

Cassandra took the lead as they picked their way along the spongy path. Cole murmured under his breath, a constant commentary on all he observed and felt around him. 

“Loved, left locked, lost…” Silvhen looked up, around. Cole’s voice always sounded nearer than he was. He raised his hand and pointed ahead to the waterlogged walls of a house just visible in the dark mire.

“Yes,” Solas murmured. “I believe that is the one we’re looking for.”

They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when one of them slipped and fell, one knee splashing into the water. By now, the four of them had settled into a routine in their battles with the endless undead rising from the waters of the mire and they swung into it with a relative ease. Solas and Silvhen’s attacks neatly dovetailed with each other, seeming almost like a synchronized performance. From the beginning, they’d even moved alike in the way they drew back their staves before channeling into a spell. Solas felt Silvhen’s mana swelling against his own as it shadowed his and the warmth of it, the warmth of that answering echo of his movements… _oh_... It sometimes seemed to be enough… seemed to be _everything_.

**_No_**.

_Not_ everything. It was not even enough. It could never be, not while the world… his _people_ … remained trapped in the fallout of his arrogant mistake. And the sorrow that lanced through his heart obliterated his thoughts at that moment. The same moment Cole opened the door to the sagging, abandoned house and stood face-to-face with a wraith.

It all happened so quickly. Seeing it was a simple wraith, Silvhen channeled the fiery energy of her staff at it. Two quick pulses and it would be done. She felt rather than heard Solas miss a step. She felt rather than saw Solas’ staff cut through the air over his head in a complete circle before…

Her shout of warning drowned in the clap of the staff hitting the ground and channeling chain lightning toward the wraith. The wraith… and the three bog fishers none of them had seen grazing peacefully off to the side of the house. Cole and Cassandra turned to face the two mages just as a bog fisher reared up behind Silvhen.

Solas instantly fade stepped to the beast’s side and unleashed a salvo of bolts into its body. Cassandra swung her mace back just in time to keep Cole from rushing the animal in a panic while the electricity still surged through it. Then Silvhen’s peripheral vision caught two more bog fishers rounding the corner of the house. She instantly schooled her expression and pushed down hard on her own rising panic. She knew Solas could read her like an open book and they could not afford a single second of distraction if he turned to see what she was looking at. Her mind whipped through their options as a party until she saw the dance, each step choreographed in split seconds. Her staff swung in front of her as she brought it up to freeze the bog fisher in the rear.

”Cole! Flank! Cass, stun the other one! Solas!” But he was already lining up the spell she wanted, so she focused again on her target and hurled a barrage of energy bolts at it. Her mouth went dry when the beast plowed ahead towards her, seemingly oblivious to the shocks pounding its body. A quick glance told her Cole and Solas had barely gotten through the first fisher’s guard and she could hear Cassandra’s pained grunts as she was knocked down and dragged for the second time by the other one.

“Buffs! Now!” she screamed as she dove and rolled out of the third bog fisher’s path. Coming to her feet, she spun around in a full circle, scanning the field. Two wraiths. No other bog fishers.

She didn’t need to call out to Solas. The second he saw her staff arc cleanly above her head, he followed suit, resisting the fierce urge to check the field himself lest they repeat his misstep in unleashing chain lightning in the first place. Their twin chains lashed and intertwined together as they bounced from one fisher to the next and the last, the powerful arcs eating through their guards and tipping the balance of the fight at last. Cole found his feet in the chaos and slipped into stealth, increasing the severity of his daggers’ damage and Cassandra redirected her efforts towards the target closest to death. The fewer rushing charges they had to deal with, the sooner the fight would be over.

In mere moments, and yet in slow motion, the first bog fisher went down, then only heartbeats later, the second one. Just a few more moments and the last one died in the middle of a charge, its snout plowing the mud neatly as a garden furrow. The four comrades stood still, their harsh breathing loud in the sudden silence. Slowly, the sounds of the Mire returned while they caught their breath and took stock of their injuries. Cole was the first to recover. He slipped into the rotting house and returned with the key they had been looking for. “Locked for long, but left forever.” He pressed it into Silvhen’s palm where its edges appeared blackened against the eerie light seeping through the mark on her hand. Silvhen’s shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she answered.

”Whatever your next step is, Inquisitor,” Cassandra adjusted her bracers as she spoke. “I implore the _Maker_ that it involves returning to Skyhold posthaste.” Only Solas caught the bright flash of mischief in Silvhen’s eyes, their usual pinkish-purple hue darkened to a cloudy sherry colour in the dim Mire. He knew every inch of her face, the shape and feel of her lips, their every expression having been tasted by him. He swiftly looked down lest his own lips curve in a smile and give away her game.

”Well, I thought…” Silvhen injected just the right amount of hesitance into her voice.

Cassandra’s head snapped up, these words being most certainly not the ones she’d hoped to hear. Silvhen gestured in the direction of the ruined keep where they’d defeated Movran the Under’s idiot son. “The artifact Blackwall wanted… we have Cole with us, we could go get it. The lock would be no problem for him and-“ She couldn’t keep it up. She burst into laughter. “Oh, Sylaise’s knickers, Cassandra, your face.”

”Yes, yes, go ahead and mock.” Her face indeed the absolute picture of thunder, Cassandra turned and stalked in the direction of their camp, her dignified stride marred by the squelching and sucking of her boots in the mud. Cole stealthed and followed at a safe distance behind her. Solas couldn’t help the chuckles that bubbled in his chest and Silvhen’s heart glowed with warmth as she drank in the soft, glorious sound of it.

He was still smiling when he pulled her close to him, fitting her hips snugly against his. She had to focus to keep her breathing even at the contact. She would _never_ get tired of the intensity of the intimacy they shared, or the ease with which he slipped into it as soon as they were alone. Solas rested his lips against her temple – her willowy height almost matched his – and she sighed deeply, her mind churning as she surveyed the still forms of the slain bog fishers.

She tilted her head back slightly to look into Solas’ eyes. His gaze met hers, steady and open. A slight lift to his eyebrow invited her to ask whatever it was she seemed to want to ask.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Silvhen felt the abrupt stiffness in his embrace and immediately regretted the question. His gaze broke, the deep blue-grey fathoms of his eyes sliding away from hers, distant once more. Frustration rolled through her like a wave. He was like stars in the night sky, winking out of view if one looked directly at them, only to appear once again, maddeningly, in the periphery of one’s vision. For every moment she thought they had connected, there was another where she felt like they were still strangers.

Solas set her away from him; only a few inches, but it might as well have been miles. She suddenly felt just… _tired_. He opened his mouth to speak, but Silvhen lifted her hand and he stopped.

“I’m not interested in whatever vague reply you just now thought up,” she said. Solas’ gaze snapped back to her face, eyes narrowed.

“No?” His tone was guarded.

“No. Solas…” she stopped, shoulders slumping.

A pang of some unnamed emotion went through him at the sight. She suddenly seemed small to him, and his gut twisted to know that he had contributed to the mild air of defeat she wore. It was wrong, he told himself for the thousandth time. It was wrong to play it both ways, as he had been doing. To give in to the myriad temptations she unwittingly presented in her curiosity, her interests. Her humour and her keen insights. And then to withdraw, withhold himself and his true nature lest he give away too much and jeopardize all that he had done and still needed to do. To shutter his growing feelings for her while still indulging them both in this heady intimacy was heinously unfair. It was beneath him and wholly unwarranted by her.

Any number of retorts ran through Silvhen’s mind; some pithy, some sarcastic. In the end though, she simply shook her head and started walking toward the camp.

“Good night, Solas. We’ll start on our return to Skyhold in the morning.”

Solas watched her retreating figure for several long moments. He chastised himself yet again for his failure to choose a side and stick to it. He must decide soon, he resolved. Very soon. One of the most distinguished qualities Silvhen possessed was her ability to listen. When she listened, she heard not just the words spoken, but the the words beneath. The words breathed but unvoiced. Solas had watched her, had noted her ability to hear the words in an expression, in the set of a shoulder, the tightness of a line near an eye, the throb of a vein near a temple. Silvhen could hear a lie the instant it was decided upon, before it was even spoken. But this ability was also her most dangerous quality.

He must decide soon. He _must_. It was only a matter of time before he slipped and either told an outright lie or the bald truth. Either way, she would know instantly and he would be found out.

As he neared their tents, he saw Cole perched on a makeshift bench next to the fire as was his habit throughout the night. Cole glanced sidelong at Cassandra’s tent and Solas dipped his head, acknowledging the spirit’s message. He would sleep alone tonight. Silvhen would bunk with Cassandra, having read his reticence as a need for solitude, and he was grateful for her thoughtfulness. He already missed her, but the thoughts and feelings churning within him would have been exhausting to try to hide. Not bothering to conceal his expression from Cole, he gave Cassandra’s tent one last soft glance before stretching out on his own bedroll. Before slipping almost instantly into the Fade, Cole’s voice reached his ears.

“Loved, left locked, lost. He is loved, but left locked, he will be lost.”

Solas flung an arm over his eyes.

_Goddamnit._


End file.
